Survival Gone Too Far

Oh how I yearn for a Stockton, a Cosmo, a Sergei or a Spike. The worst thing about the department store is the solitude. Yes, I'm surrounded by people, but conversation is sparse, and each member of staff toils in isolation. Whether it be on the tillpoint or stacking the shelves, there is little opportunity to connect with anyone. This loneliness erupts in strange ways, members of staff suddenly divulging personal and irrelevant information in the hope to be noticed. I've had women telling me their procedure for obtaining a lift home from their husbands, people telling me, in great detail, their technique for efficient date rotation, people sitting next to me in the canteen and opening their hearts in the most pornographic and gruesome way, their outflow punctuated by them scoffing dry oven chips and over-cooked fishcakes.

It is no wonder that the majority of the staff have a slumped posture, frowning faces and a deep, deep melancholy. In some cases, the management deem it necessary for certain members of staff to wear t-shirts that declare "Happy to Help!" Whether this is to convince the staff or the customers, it is not clear. I doubt there is one person who is actually happy in that place, let alone Happy to Help. Of course, there are the opposites. A few members of staff who are so willfully chirpy that it can only spell mental illness, or a lamentable submission to the gruesome machine of retail. Maybe it's simpler being that way, and I don't judge them.

The managers, however, are a different animal. They are all the same, so much so that their faces bleed together and it's impossible to recognise an individual. They all have arrogant swaggers and walk around the shopfloor with mobile phones to their ears, doing absolutely no work, but maintaining a harried, busy look. They thrive on ordering their minions about, waiting for the day when they will have their own gang of flying monkeys to do their bidding. They speak in terms of profit, a naked greed shining in their eyes - the worst mental illness of the lot. They say things like: "This percentage increase really was an achieve." I'm sure they really mean achievement, and somehow this mutation of the language contains more threat than a thousand "innits" or "m8tes". There is a list of retail slang that these freaks pour out of their mouths, and all of them believe they are a higher race of warrior people, a strain of ubermen whose personal Kryptonite is having to deal with us, the retard till-jockeys and shelf-stuffers. A couple of days ago I witnessed one of these managers laying into a cleaner. After shouting at the poor guy for a good five minutes, he used the line: "Come on, it's not as if your job is hard." Christ, it takes a certain person to be a retail manager, and they have constructed their own twisted vision of a Fourth Reich, where intolerance reigns and the dirty work is far from their hands...

An example of the managers' manipulation: They asked a young lad to come off the till and dress up as a turkey to promote the new Turkey Ordering Service for Christmas. The lad was reticent. "Come on," said the manager, with an affected friendly laugh in his voice. "It's Christmas, it's all a bit of fun!" The lad felt he had no choice but to don the turkey costume and begin the process of handing out leaflets. This was particularly sinister, using the idea of a celebratory, "fun" Christmas to disguise the ugly profit-wrangling and money-chasing of commerce. The lad, no more than eighteen, felt he would be viewed as some kind of Scrooge if he didn't humiliate himself. The manager in question would never dress up like a turkey, yet he is the one that is invested in mark-ups and profit. The world is upside down, I fear.

All of this is even before you start talking about the customers, people who will happily spend £600 on luxury items and spend a good portion of their day complaining about the price to all who are in their vicinity. They are the citizens of a particularly negative place. A Cheshire town which Stockton once described as "like a long, squealing guitar solo with no bass or drums." There is no need for more comment on this matter, but all of this adds up to a strange experience. I feel like an astronaut, touching down on a particularly nasty planet, unable to comprehend any of the madness. As soon as my landing craft is refueled, I shall be leaving...